The blow
For many years it was widely believed that only a giant ripping gash torn by the iceberg could have doomed such a magnificent ship. A "300-foot gash in the hull" was often mentioned—just like the image we show in our issue from two weeks after the tragedy:

Later calculations looked at the rate with which water flooded the ship during the two hours and 40 minutes it stayed afloat after the collision and showed that "the gash" in reality would have resulted in only slight damage to the hull, perhaps amounting a dozen square meters in total. This deduction was confirmed in 1985 when submersibles imaged the hull of the Titanic resting on the ocean floor four kilometers down. The images revealed several small gashes, or perhaps several hull plates had popped apart giving the illusion of gashes. (Historians have suggested that the wrought iron rivets holding the plates together were not as strong as they should have been.)

Conclusion
As the complexity of engineering projects increases exponentially, so does the focus on safety. Within any system there is no danger more potent, more capable of causing harm, than human frailty. In January of 2012 the Costa Concordia, the largest luxury liner built in Italy, manufactured at the Fincantieri shipyards in the ancient seafaring city of Genoa to the highest standards of safety specified by law, struck a reef in the Mediterranean, and partially capsized, killing dozens of people. The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, seems to have steered his ship onto the rocks in a moment of weakness: The courts and the tabloids as well as armchair experts of the Internet are still disputing whether that weakness had anything to do with a comely 25-year-old Moldovan ex-dancer—and a Roman god called Cupid.

4 Comments

1. 1. bongobimbo 06:36 PM 4/4/12

   PART ONE: Click on "Suggestion for a Full Complement of Lifeboats", and read, after reading this.
   
   RMS TITANIC had a complement of 1,178 passengers, crew and hired specialists. The naval architect wanted 64 lifeboats, but the company provided only 20. Doing the arithmetic shows that each lifeboat, even if filled to the capacity of 47 (very few were) would still need to turn 5 or more people away to drown. Only by increasing the size of each lifeboat to a capacity of 59 could 1,178 fit into 20 boats. So far as I know, enlarging the lifeboats and increasing space between the davits was never considered and may have been impossible in 1912.
   
   Had 64 lifeboats been provided (hung in tiers) each boat could have been lowered after a maximum of 18 passengers boarded. (64 into 1178 = 18.40625.) 60 boats would have been triple the 20 boats that were furnished, and more efficient than 64. 60 boats could handle 19 people, well within the capacity of a 47-person boat. Makes me wonder why Mr Andrews asked for 64.
   
   The SciAm team that analyzed the sinking in 1912 and wrote the "Full Complement of Boats" report came up with an even more efficient lifeboat plan. If hung single-tier in the davits, we can count 36 boats in the SciAm 1912 illustration. 32 people could have fit into each 47-capacity boat and every single person of the 1,178 could have been saved. There would be no need to hang boats double-tiered since 72 boats would be too many. Tragic that Mr Andrews didn’t argue longer or louder with the company, and tragic that no one in Parliament argued with the Board of Trade over a long-obsolete reg originally adopted in the age of sail. But of course it was the "Gilded Age", an era of foolish and dogmatic misuse of capitalism against a sensible (and actually more conservative) social contract that was desperately needed.

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2. 2. bongobimbo 06:41 PM 4/4/12

   PART TWO: Today the sleepwalking lawmakers aren’t the Board of Trade, but the NeoCons and Blue Dogs in the US Congress and their counterparts in other countries who, like the early 1900s’ robber barons, also worship the great god Mammon via a form of virulent capitalism that must have Adam Smith screaming in his grave! These greedos ignore or defy the evidence for human-caused runaway global warming--not to mention multitudes of other needed reforms on behalf of real people.
   
   Like the Board of Trade a hundred years ago, quick profits for their good buddies the fossil fuel super-rich dazzle them, since they known there will be a rake-off for them. Having no consciences to warn them of the need for public safety and common sense, the Tea Partiers of 2012 plod along in a state of advanced hubris. They too will face public fury, because just like the TITANIC, their arrogance is speeding the world to crash into the planetary equivalent of an immovable iceberg in a sea lane. Except this time billions of lives will be lost.
   

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3. 3. WizeHowl in reply to bongobimbo 09:00 AM 4/7/12

   I think you have your numbers slightly wrong, from my memory there were 2,278 or there about. Since 1,517 died your figures are out.
   
   But your on the right track. With 64 boats an average of 36 people could have safely been transferred to the Carpathia and other rescue ships with virtually no loss of life.
   
   

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4. 4. dschlenoff in reply to bongobimbo 11:14 AM 4/16/12

   Lifeboats--yet another detail that can be endlessly disputed. Only 4 lifeboats (the collapsible ones) had a 47-person capacity; 14 had a capacity of 65 (one was tested prior to the journey and had 70 men crammed in it safely, although office Lightoller testified later that he was worried that a lifeboat at full capacity would have strained the lowering mechanism); the two small cutters had a capacity of 40.

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